TWO THINGS SORKIN CAN'T DO

Last night, I had the good fortune to attend a special screening of The Social Network wherein Aaron (Wow, that crappy iPhone shot makes him look seventy) Sorkin would talk about writing the film.

Joining him under the screen was Andrew Garfield, Armie Hammer and Justin Timberlake (here, apparently, to avoid the travesty that is that other Justin winning anything at the AMA's across town).

Seeing as there was recently a hubbub about how good actors never stick to the script and just say what they want, here's what the people behind what will surely be an Oscar nominated film, screenplay and cast said last night...in screenplay format.


• INT. AERO THEATRE - NIGHT
  
• TIMBERLAKE, GARFIELD, HAMMER and SORKIN sit in the dimly lit, art deco styled theatre. They speak into handheld microphones. SULLIVAN sits in the third row, memorizing this shit.
  
• SORKIN
  
• (truthy)
  
• As the cast will tell you, I give them complete freedom when it comes to the words. I let them know that the script is a suggestion.
• Laughter breaks out in the theatre.
  
• TIMBERLAKE
  
• Funny enough, we were just joking about this before we came out. I was joking about the film that I'm doing right now and how the director is giving some authorship to the actors and Aaron made the joke that he had that process with us, that he just laid the blueprint for our work. Yeah, you laid the blueprint. He looked at all of us and said "you're the color blue, now go print."
  
• SORKIN
  
• The truth is I really admire writers who write in a style, whether it's Judd Apatow, or in the extreme, Christopher Guest, writers who write in a style that allows more playing around with the language. I don't know how to do that. So instead I write - you have to do the words.
• 
  

Following on the importance of words, Sorkin talked a little about his style of dialogue, which is most often called "musical" and with good reason.


• INT. AERO THEATRE - LATER THAT NIGHT
  
• As before.
  
• SORKIN
  
• Realistic isn't quite something that I'm thinking of. There's another word for it and I'm not sure what it is. Like I said* it's the painting versus photograph or in this case, painting versus audio recording. There are other writers that are great at writing incredibly realistic and very gritty dialogue. There are writers like Sam Shepherd or David Mamet, David Milch and a bunch of others that are absolute virtuosos at writing dialogue where people have a lot of difficulty communicating with each other. I really love that. It's not something I am able to do. What I do do is I'm playing all the parts while it's happening. I want it to sound like something. I became a writer because my parents took me to plays, all the time. A lot of times I was too young to understand the play. They took me to see Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? when I was nine-years-old. There's no way I could understand what's going on, but I love the sound of the dialogue. It sounded like music to me and I just wanted to imitate that sound. So to me, what the words sound like is just as important as what they mean.
• 
  

In an only-in-21st-century-LA moment, I thought I recognized this woman across the aisle as one of my internet acquaintances (i.e. someone I know only via bits, never met in person). Uncertain, I tweeted her and informed her that she was either at this theatre, or her evil twin was. Within seconds, a I had twitformation that it was, in fact, here and we finally met, three years after a mutual friend gave me her email for advice on working in LA.

So check out Liz Rizzo at her blog, Everyday Goddess.

EXPOSE YOUR TOP

I have an internet friend. Big surprise there, eh?

His name is David Anaxagoras and he is curious about workspaces. And at his blog, he ruminates ever so briefly on the phenomenon of writers who like to see the workspaces of other writers. There is, as, Mr. Anax points out, a whole photo-series about writers’ rooms over at The Guardian.

After waxing anaxagorical, he posts a request. Show him your virtual workspace, i.e. the ubiquitous desktop on your desktop (or laptop). I've posted mine right here. Click the pic for embiggenation.

I must say, I too am intrigued by other people's workspaces, and I'll go one further. Show me your actual workspace. If you dare.

Be it a Starbucks, your office at the studio, an actual room in your home or perhaps a gap between two buildings in WeHo where there's a garbage bag that fits you like a bean bag chair, show me.

Just pop a pic up on the Flickr or wherever, or send it to me, I can put it up on my server (or not, if you're not feeling that exhibitionistic).

JUDGE READ

Check this out. I was a judge for the National Student Film Association of the United Kingdom. I feel so international.

It was certainly an interesting experience. There were a couple of good ones. One in particular manipulated my sense of sentimentality like there were servos connected up to it that could be actuated by an X-Box controller.

There were a couple of really bad ones. One writer, I'm fairly sure aspires to be L. Ron Hubbard, using his screenplay to espouse some sort of nonsensical philosophy though really weird characters. He's got some work to do before he reaches any kind of Scientological level.

Then there was the poem set to pictures. The word is screenplay, not screenpoem. Obviously, the scoring is not going to be awesome on that one.

In between was a lot of chaff. Scenes that went no where. Characters talking just to have talk. And more than one childish revenge fantasy, but the majority of them showed the beginnings of something that, if followed upon and really worked at could be...something.

They may just be students, but I graded from a more professional standpoint. There is no leeway in this industry. Either you're good or you're not (or somebody owes you). But if you're not good, you can become so. Just be open to it.

THE TRACY MORGAN INTERVIEW

Third in a series of posts where I answer questions from interviews of other people. Each interview is chosen by readers. You can suggest one yourself in the comments.

In this edition, I am interviewed by whatever questions the anchors and entertainment reporter managed to eek out during Tracy Morgan's loopy appearence on the Chicago WGN Morning News. This one suggested by fellow hometown boy Adam Marshall.

Early morning guy, Tracy?

I'm an early morning guy in that early morning is when I think I should be going to bed. And my name isn't Tracy.


What do your tattoos say?

I don't have any tattoos, which it seems makes me a bit of a freak. I'm not opposed to getting a tattoo at some point, but my criteria for getting them are very strict indeed.

I find most tattoos to be either ridiculously cliche or lacking in any real and permanent significance.

Whatever I get, it has to have meaning. A real personal meaning to me. A word in a foreign language system doesn't hold any meaning for me.

Somebody once asked me why I don't get a NIN tattoo, seeing as I've been a loyal fan for almost twenty years. Because what if, one day, Reznor suffers a head injury and turns Nine Inch Nails into a Vegas lunge act. Any tattoo that can conceivably turn on me one day is out of the running.

Maybe if I one day get my own series on the air, perhaps a related insignia might find it's way on to my skin, but other than that...not bloody likely.


Anything you want to ask Star Jones?

I'd totally forgotten about that self-aggrandizing, greedy, frog-eyed fame-whore. Why would your bring her up so long after she's thankfully faded from the mainstream.

If I were going to ask her something, it would probably be something about the tastelessness of getting corporate sponsors for her own wedding? I can't help but to be disgusted when people who are clearly a part of the top five percent of income-earners (especially when the reason they were getting paid is beyond understanding (read: talentless fame-grabber) are too damn cheap to pay for their own extravagances. It's not like she was doing it so she could spend the equivilent on orphans.

Also, I'd ask her about how self-delusional she is. Did she not understand that flaunting her wedding that she didn't even pay for on The View day in day out was going to alienate the average View-viewer, who are likely trying to raise a couple of kids on less than a couple a million dollars a year. And also, the denial of gastric-bypass surgery. She was basically saying their stupid too. She just wanted to make herself look more awesome and better-than her audience.

Can you tell I hate out-of-touch, self-centered twits?


You got a few teenagers at home, how is that working out for you?

Not too badly, seeing as they're about a foot tall and covered with fur. They're pretty low maintenance. I heartily recommend them.


I want to know how this goes. Tina Fey comes up to you and says "I've got this conceited, obnoxious guy I think you'd perfect for."

Tina Fey can say whatever she wants to me.


Is it fun?

Let's start with Tina Fey talking to me, then see what happens after that. Cart, horse.


You're going to be at the Improv in Schaumburg?

No. I would love to get back to the Chicagoland area, but even if I do...the chances of me going to a comedy club in the 'burbs are pretty damn slim.

SHE MADE ME TALK

A brief interruption in the series in which I answer the questions posed in interviews of other people. That, so I may point you to an interview of me in which the questions were actually asked of me in the first place.

Over at the screenwriting blog, Bamboo Killers, I answer a few questions regarding my writing process (i.e. writing schedule, productivity, self-editing).

I'm still taking interviews of other people to answer the questions of. (Was that really a sentence.)

The previous interviews:

• The Ashley Greene Interview
• The William Gibson Interview

Coming up next, The Tracey Morgan Interview.

THE WILLIAM GIBSON INTERVIEW

Second in a series of posts where I answer questions from interviews of other people. Each interview is chosen by readers. You can suggest one yourself in the comments.

In this edition, I am interviewed by The Onion AV Club's questions for author/futurist William Gibson, based on a suggestion by Will Hindmarch.

Zero History can be seen as the third part in a loose trilogy that started with Pattern Recognition and Spook Country. Was this intentional?

I don't really get the sense that even Spook Country was intended to follow on Pattern Recognition. Gibson's follow-up feels to me to be an after-the fact connection to the preceding book. That it naturally found it's way to related themes and into characters like Milgrim. Probably the same is true of Zero History.

You often return to the same characters in your work. Do you like the sense of a pervasive world?

You apparently need to read my work a little more closely. Or at all. As an aspiring TV writer, I've been writing pilots and specs. There's not much use in me writing a second episode to follow a pilot until such time as I sell said pilot. As far as specs, I rarely write a second spec for a series I've already spec'ed.

By the time the first one is outdated, the series in question has probably fallen out of favor as a spec anyway, so...again, less reuse of characters, but yes, I do like a pervasive world. Don't you kinda of have to in television.

So you basically just throw characters into the mix and stir.

That is kinda the way I write pilots. I usually want to design a compelling character. Someone I want to write about and then draw the world they inhabit around them. So, yeah...apt assumption for someone who clearly just skimmed my stuff.

Have you ever written yourself into a corner that way?

Not so much. By concentrating so heavily on writing for television, I generally create characters with fairly open and explorable arcs. Though, sometimes, when I write a character who's supposed to be a super genius (and I've gone that way more than once, it's an archetype I really like), I do tend to get them into plots that they'd be smart enough to get out of a lot faster than five acts.

History deals partly with the Hounds, a clothing line that’s based on utility and authenticity. Do you think this speaks to a current need in our culture?

We need extremely little in life. In clothing, the only necessarily utility is protection from the elements and whatever level of modesty is required by society and one's self. After that comes aesthetics. Authenticity is right at the bottom, is 100% an issue of fashion and it's really a bullshit concept in that sense as it takes place entirely in the wearer's head and very rarely in the observer's.

I'm not sure I can even grasp the concept of authenticity in clothing, except for authenticity to one's self and outside of myself, I honestly can't trust that from anyone, especially anyone who makes a point of pointing out that authenticity. We all find the fashion holes our fashion pegs fit in. Those who choose not to are rare indeed. In fact, if five people reading this think they are the one's choosing not to fit the hole, four of them just don't realize that they found they're perfect fitting hole, it's just not as popular as some other ones.

Does it fit a need in our culture? No. Does it fit a psyche-fart in our culture? Hell, yes.

You’ve talked elsewhere about the modern dilemma of separating the real from the virtual. How does something like Twitter confuse the issue?

I don't remember the conversation to which you refer, but I think that Twitter, fairly obvious blurs the lines between small talk and real conversation, between people you know and people you think you know and between even familiarity and intimacy.

For instance, I can now carry on something not unlike a conversation with a person I've never met. Now, assuming I'm not an attention whore twitter who follows every @ they can get their grubby little headsponge on, the people that I do choose to follow are going to fall into certain categories.

1. Friends, people I know in real life or have regularly communicated with at length prior to signing up for twitter.

2. News gathering follows. An entirely one-way exchange, people feeding me information. Links, jokes, news, whatever.

3. Automatic followbacks. A thing I do not clog my timeline with.

4. Figures of admiration.

The division gets really confused in number four. There's a bizarre level of stalkeridity in that, even in people who very unstalkerlike, normal and well-adjusted. It sneaks in. Many are fully aware of it and deal with it but just the fact that you need to be aware of it speaks to a blurring of the line. You already know something about them before you begin following them and the tweetview lets you in even more. And now, the possibilty that they might be answering your tweets creates a false familiarity when they don't even know your name while they're replying to your tweet. If their personal assistant isn't doing the tweeting, truly a virtual existence.

Is that the reason behind your shift from futuristic science fiction to the more immediately modern work you do now?

No, I think it's got more to do with the harder sell in television of futuristic science fiction and the fact that I stopped writing Star Trek specs a long time ago.

Do you still consider yourself a science-fiction writer? Does that term still have meaning?

I don't consider myself a science fiction writer, but to get all semantic on your ass, I do consider myself a writer of science fiction. I write plenty of non-sci-fi in several genres. It would be simply inaccurate to take on the title of science fiction writer.

The term still has meaning, but it either is or should be shifting away from what it once was. There's the whole "speculative fiction" tag. I get that. I support it. I think in the world where that tag exists, science fiction starts to veer toward something more in line with the present and the immediate future. In that sense, isn't CSI science fiction maybe even science fantasy). Science fiction is just stories where science is integral to the plot conceptually. Eureka is science fiction. Battlestar is not, generally (though some episodes are, most are about human conflicts like religion and survival).

What? Yeah, they fly in space and they are robots. How and why doesn't matter so much. Don't care how the ship works. Don't care how the robots work. It's a character drama, and character driven. Eureka is a character drama is well, but the plots are built on science and understanding the science just a little is part and parcel of the story.

Doctor Who is science fantasy. Leverage is crime fantasy (just to show that fantasy isn't limited in genre).

The Event is a list of things that happen. It's only even fiction in that those things didn't really happen.

You often feature strong female protagonists, which in science fiction is not always a given.

At this point, a strong female protagonist is just good marketing, because they're aren't enough of them, and a lot of the ones there are really aren't that interesting. Sometimes they're just guys in conceptual drag. For all I know, I'm guilty of that, but I'd like to think not.

The iPhone pops up often in History. Given the recent controversy over the iPhone 4’s lack of function as an actual phone, what do you think that has to say about the way the market defines our need for a product?

Yeah, I don't get that. It calls people and you talk to them. Does it not do everything that every other phone since the beginning of time (that being defined as 1876 A.D.) I think the complaints are that it's not a full-on fucking Star Trek Tricorder yet. While that's handy, I'm not sure it's a good thing.

Or is this about the antenna thing, they fixed that right? I have a 3GS and see no reason to upgrade in the near future. I don't need a flash, photo quality is bullshit (unless you're taking surveillance photos), and I don't want Facetime.

Of course the internet has fostered a complaint nation. The unironic rage I see whenever Twitter goes down for less than a minute (despite that it is a free service, it asks nothing of you, and that no one is entitled to), or when FaceBook commits some intentional and egregious privacy violation (despite the fact that after half a dozen such violations, the thought of quitting the also free and non-entitled service is anathema), it fills me with...unironic rage?

As far as it's appearance in Gibson's book. It was either that or Blackberry. They're the only phones to reach an iconic status ripe for exploitation in fiction. And Blackberry has a very "suit" connotation. The iPhone is everybody else.

You’re famous for inventing terms like “cyberspace.” Now you’re using brand names and other people’s terms. Does it change the process to be using pre-existing slang?

I invented cyberspace? I need a lawyer. I need retroactive trademark protections.

Pattern Recognition was optioned for a film adaptation a few years ago. Has there been any movement on that?

Fuck film. Put that shit on TV. That's where the good stuff lives anyway.

You characters wade through intellectual one-upsmanship and high concepts, but in the end, personal relationships matter the most. Do you think these connections are more important to us in the digital age?

They are. Just go to your FaceBook and pull up your friends list. Who's gonna turn up at the hospital, feed your cat, and maybe even help you out with your bills when something catastrophic happens to you? The more people that you have like that in your life, the better off you are. In the digital age, we have an opportunity to expand that circle in new and different ways. It's is perfectly possible to have real personal digital friendship that can reach that level. We don't know our next door neighbors like we did in the pre-digital age, but you only had the people on either side of you and down the street. Now, you've got a whole planet of connections, but a lot of those aren't very deep, it makes the real ones more important, real world-based or otherwise.

THE ASHLEY GREENE INTERVIEW

One in a series of posts where I answer questions from interviews of other people. Each interview is chosen by readers. You can suggest one yourself in the comments.

In this edition, I am interviewed by Entertainment Weekly's questions for Twilight co-star Ashley Greene, based on a suggestion by Adam Avitable.

Are the reactions to Twilight the same all around the country?

I really am fascinated by the way I've seen grown women - and by grown, I mean they have daughters who fit squarely in the target demographic...and a couple who aged out of it - consistently reverting to their high school states. All around the country, the housewives (so I assume from their pastel colored sweatshirts) are revealing that they weren't once cool kids and just kind of settled in to this outwardly comfortable, inwardly desolate life. They were always just a little off.

What was your most memorable fan encounter?

Probably the first time that I realized that talking into one makes you sound like a robot. Sometimes the simplest things are so ridiculously fascinating.

Why do you think fans are so obsessed?

Well, let's be fair. They're really just built to do the one thing. I'm not looking for diversity in specific appliances. I just want to stay cool.

How has playing Alice Cullen changed your career?

Honestly, it hasn't. I know much better than to ask co-workers and superiors to come to my all-transvestisism Twilight re-enactment parties.

And what is the downside?

That if they knew how awesome my Ashley Greene imitation is, they would finally respect me. It's all I want. just a little recognition for the few things in life I do well.

What was your favorite scene to film?

How did you know we tape them? Was it George? I swear, I think he's using them for his reel. Admittedly, he looks real good in Victoria's big white furry whatever that--

He gives that scene a lot of gravitas.

That's not even question. You're just fucking with me now.

What was your first reaction to New Moon?

I wish Mystery Science Theatre 3000 was still on the air. And they had a big enough budget to get the rights to it.

Who’s your closest friend in the cast?

No lie? Michael Sheen. That was easy. I mean, if you ask any of the cast, they'd all probably say the same thing about me. I think I get on the same with all of them, but I feel a special connection with Michael Sheen. I call it not-hating-him.

Is there a role out there you’d really like to play?

Oh, yes. Sherlock Holmes. Nothing like an unrepentantly smart, socially retarded, condescending, drug-addicted crimefighter. Answering this question, by no means suggests an actual ability to act and even if I could, I'm no Benedict Cumberbatch.

If you could pick the director to helm Breaking Dawn, who would it be?

David Mamet.

Edward: And so the lion fell in love with the lamb.

Bella: Lamb.

Edward: Sick.

Bella: Fucking stupid lamb.

Edward: Sick, masochistic...

Bella: The lamb?

Edward: Cocksucker lion.

Q: (NOT AN EMOTICON OF A GUY IN A FEZ)

I have elected to institute a new feature here on this site of webbiness. I shall submit myself to interviews. "Surely," you're asking, "there's no one terribly interested in what you have to say, let alone bother to compose a series of questions to that end?"

Yeah, probably. There is, however a catch and a fairly silly one at that.

I will answer all the questions from interviews put to other people, regardless of whether or not the questions bear any relevance to my - or your - life

. Simply post in the comments to email directly to me a link to an interview with any individual. Really, any individual. I look forward to proffering my responses to questions posed in such notable periodicals (and websites thereof) as Time Magazine, Progressive Farmer, and Ceramics Monthly. Or, if you are interested in perhaps transcribing all the questions asked by Frost of Nixon, or Gul Madred of Picard, then go to it. I look forward to the challenge offered by interviews with people in fields I know fuck-all about.

Bring it forth on.

THIS IS ALMOST ENOUGH...

...to make up for Shat My Dad Says.

Almost.